Lewisville homes between the lake and the creeks

First, plainly

Our Lewisville record starts with this reopening

Remediate has done a lot of work across Dallas–Fort Worth in earlier years, and we are opening our doors in the area again. Nothing in our present job log is filed under Lewisville yet, so you will not find Lewisville photos or job stories here.

Instead, this page holds what a contractor should know about this particular city before stepping into one of its houses: where its water comes from when it floods, the rules the city applies to a damaged house in the floodplain, the two very different kinds of ground it is built on, and the age and shape of its housing. Every number below links to the public agency that published it.

Lake, river, creeks

The dam holds the lake; the creeks are what flood streets

Lewisville's flooding happens mostly along the creeks that cross the city on their way to the Elm Fork of the Trinity River. The river below the lake is controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers through Lewisville Dam, and short of a severe event the lake and the river stay inside their banks.

That is how the city's engineers put it on their flood protection page, and they add the part people tend to miss: even with the lake low and calm, the smaller creeks can rise fast in heavy rain. The city names Timber Creek, Prairie Creek and Denton Creek on the west side and Midway Branch and Indian Creek on the east, plus their smaller tributaries. A house that has never taken water can still take it, the page says, because weather and streams change.

The lake itself is a federal project. The Texas Water Development Board's reservoir page records that the Corps' Fort Worth District operates it for water supply, flood control and recreation, that the dam controls about 1,660 square miles of drainage, and that the flood pool rises to the emergency spillway crest at 532 feet above sea level, where the lake spreads over roughly 39,170 acres.

For a repair, the source of the water matters. Rising creek water counts as flood water, and the city reminds owners that standard homeowner's policies do not cover flood losses. Lewisville takes part in the National Flood Insurance Program, so any owner in the city can buy a federally backed flood policy, in a mapped floodplain or not, and contents need their own coverage. FloodSmart, the program's own site, explains the policies. A burst supply line, by contrast, is a household water loss, the kind a homeowner's policy is usually written around.

Building in the floodplain

Repairing a flood-zone house under Lewisville's rules

If the cost of repairing or remodeling a Lewisville building in the floodplain exceeds 50 percent of its value, the whole building has to meet the rules for new construction. That holds whatever caused the damage: flood, fire or tornado.

All four points come from the same city flood protection page. The flood zone for an address is on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Flood Map Service Center, and the city's Engineering Division at City Hall keeps the local maps and flood studies. A large repair after creek water can approach the 50 percent line sooner than owners expect, so we put our line-by-line estimate in front of you early, before the drywall goes back up.

Under the slab

Sandy ground and heavy clay, sometimes a few streets apart

Lewisville does not sit on one soil. USDA soil maps for the area around the city show sandy loams such as Gasil, Silstid and Birome next to heavy clays such as Ferris, Heiden, Burleson and Wilson, and the two behave very differently under a house.

We pulled the ratings from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service's Soil Data Access service for the Denton County soil survey. Linear extensibility measures how much a soil swells and shrinks as it wets and dries. Silstid, a loamy sand, is rated at about 1.5 percent, which NRCS counts as low. Ferris and Heiden clays are rated at about 17 percent, which it counts as very high. Wilson clay loam sits near 7.5 percent. There is even a soil series that shares the city's name: the Lewisville series, a deep, well-drained silty clay of stream terraces, rated moderate.

What that means in practice: two houses of the same age can behave very differently. On the heavy clays a slab rises in a wet spring and settles in a dry summer, and plumbing cast into the slab moves with it, which is one way a slab leak starts. You can look up the mapped soil under your own lot for free in Web Soil Survey. When we suspect a slab leak, we map the wet area with meters before opening any floor, and foundation repair for clay movement is part of the rebuild work we take on. The city lists foundation repair among the jobs that need a building permit.

The housing

Mostly built since 1990, and more renters than owners

The median Lewisville home was built in 1997, according to the Census Bureau. About two homes in three, 36,332 of 54,237 housing units, date from 1990 or later; only 7,759 were built before 1980.

Those are American Community Survey estimates for 2020–2024 (median year built, B25035; year structure built, B25034). The 1990s alone added 12,891 units, the biggest single decade. In a house of that age the first wave of original parts tends to come up together: water heaters, supply lines, roof coverings. When one of them lets go, we trace where the water traveled before anything is cut out.

• Fewer than half are detached houses

  The survey counts 24,942 detached single-family homes and 3,046 attached ones (units in structure, B25024). About 21,700 units, four in ten, sit in buildings of five or more homes. A leak in a stacked building runs down and sideways into the neighbors, so we read moisture above, below and beside the unit it started in.

• Owners are the smaller group

  Of 51,915 occupied homes, 27,874 are rented and 24,041 are owner-occupied (tenure, B25003). When a tenant calls us, the owner or property manager authorizes the work on the building, and we keep both informed.

• Manufactured homes too

  The same table lists 1,310 mobile homes. Under the floor of a manufactured home, wet insulation and a soaked subfloor are what we check first, and the city's floodplain rule on elevating and anchoring them applies when they are in a mapped flood zone.

Hard freezes

Two freezing spells in February 2021, and what to do in the next one

The National Weather Service counted two separate runs of freezing weather at DFW Airport in February 2021: 93 hours from February 9 to 13, then, after a three-hour thaw, 139 more hours ending at noon on February 19.

On February 15 the daytime high at the airport stayed below the record low for that date, and the next morning it reached −2 °F, according to the NWS Fort Worth summary of the event. The airport is the official station for the region rather than a Lewisville thermometer, but a pipe in an outside wall or attic does not need a record to split. It usually shows itself only once the thaw starts and water runs again.

1. Stop the water

   Close the main shut-off, or the valve at the meter if the main is out of reach, and switch off power to wet rooms.

2. Fix the pipe

   The broken pipe itself is repaired by a licensed plumber.

3. Dry by numbers

   We pull the standing water, remove what cannot be saved and dry until the readings say dry.

4. Put it back

   Drywall, insulation, floors and paint, by the same team, with the photos and readings kept for the claim.

More detail is on water damage mitigation and rebuild after damage.

City Hall

What Lewisville's Building Services lists as permit work

Lewisville asks owners and contractors to get a building permit before remodeling, and its Building Services Division handles plans, permits and inspections. Applications, contractor registration and inspection requests all go through the city's MGO Connect portal.

The city's building permits page lists, among its permit types, several that follow damage: fire damage rebuilds, re-roofs and re-decks, siding, foundation repair, water heaters, window and door replacements, and additions and remodels. For storm damage that means a new roof or new siding goes through the city; our roof, siding and gutter repairs after hail and wind are documented for the claim like the rest of our work (see storm damage repair). The same page notes that the city's documents are being revised to match updated codes, so we confirm the current rule for each job with Building Services. On remodels, we take care of the permits and plans, and design is part of the job.

Mold, Texas rules

Who tests for mold after a Lewisville leak, and who takes it out

Texas keeps mold testing and mold removal in separate hands. Whenever we remediate mold on a Texas project, the assessment is done by an independent licensed mold assessor, never by us.

The rule is in Texas Occupations Code chapter 1958 (section 1958.155), and we do not assess and remediate the same Texas project. Once the mold is out, every material it touched is replaced with new, not cleaned and reused. Our mold remediation page walks through the work.

Paying for it

Your deductible, your adjuster, our estimate

When the repair is covered, your share is your deductible; the insurer pays us the rest directly. Anything you choose to upgrade is priced on its own.

We work as the repair contractor, not as anyone's adjuster. We record the loss in photos, moisture readings and measurements, send the adjuster an itemized estimate in the industry's standard format and answer their questions about our scope, while the claim itself stays between you and your insurance company. See working with insurance. The first consultation and quote cost nothing, the work carries a written warranty with terms set in each contract, and our lending partner offers financing.

Lewisville questions

What Lewisville owners ask about creeks, floodways and soil